Tools & Resources

You are here

The Estate System

This lesson and Basic Future Interests are designed to provide a comprehensive interactive tutorial with a scope corresponding to the usual coverage of estates and elementary future interests in the typical first-year property course. They are designed to be useful either for review or as a "first learning exposure" to the subjects covered. The lessons consist of text screens that are regularly interleaved with questions to stimulate thought and reinforce students' learning as they go. Frequent questions are intended to help maintain interest as well as to help students become familiar with new vocabulary and concepts.

The Estate System presents the possessory estates from the fee simple absolute to tenancies at will. Emphasis is on the various estates’ modern relevance, the typical language of conveyance that creates them, their differentiating characteristics, and the general theory of carving up the fee simple into particular estates and future interests. (Note: The defeasible fee simple estates are covered in Basic Future Interests).